Animation - Study

What is animation? In my own words i would say that animation is a sequence of still images played quickly to create the illusion of movement.

 'Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways. The most common method of presenting animation is as a motion picture or video program, although there are other methods.' 

This is the wikipedia explaination of animation.

The first trype of animation that comes to mind is stop motion animation mainly because i have tried it in the past but also because it is accessable to almost anyone to try and takes little resources (as little as a mobile phone) even though it can be very time consuming.